Pancreatic cancer is a malignant neoplasm originating from transformed cells arising in tissues forming the pancreas. Pancreatic cancer is one of the most common causes of cancer-related deaths in the world. Due to the absence of specific symptoms, the lack of early detection techniques, and highly aggressive phenotypes, pancreatic cancer is usually diagnosed at an advanced-incurable and metastatic stages. Thus, pancreatic cancer has an extremely poor prognosis: for all stages combined, the 1- and 5-year relative survival rates are 25% and 6%, respectively.
Therefore, there is an urgent need to develop new drugs for treatment of pancreatic cancer.